Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000

by Stephen Kotkin Narrated by John Pruden

Overview

Featuring extensive revisions to the text as well as a new introduction and epilogue-bringing the book completely up to date on the tumultuous politics of the previous decade and the long-term implications of the Soviet collapse-this compact, original, and engaging book offers the definitive account of one of the great historical events of the last fifty years.



Combining historical and geopolitical analysis with an absorbing narrative, Kotkin draws upon extensive research, including memoirs by dozens of insiders and senior figures, to illuminate the factors that led to the demise of Communism and the USSR. The new edition puts the collapse in the context of the global economic and political changes from the 1970s to the present day. Kotkin creates a compelling profile of post Soviet Russia and he reminds us, with chilling immediacy, of what could not have been predicted-that the world's largest police state, with several million troops, a doomsday arsenal, and an appalling record of violence, would liquidate itself with barely a whimper. Throughout the book, Kotkin also paints vivid portraits of key personalities. Using recently released archive materials, for example, he offers a fascinating picture of Gorbachev, describing this virtuoso tactician and resolutely committed reformer as "flabbergasted by the fact that his socialist renewal was leading to the system's liquidation"-and more or less going along with it.



At once authoritative and provocative, Armageddon Averted illuminates the collapse of the Soviet Union, revealing how "principled restraint and scheming self-interest brought a deadly system to meek dissolution."

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"The clearest picture we have to date of the post-Soviet landscape. Kotkin effectively describes how what was called 'reform' was actually a continuing freefall collapse; he also expertly depicts the lingering networks and habits of the Soviet era, and how they have formed a post-imperial world in all its corrupt splendor.... Displays the skill of a dogged reporter and a meticulous archivist...in this brief, lucid study, which draws upon dozens of obscure Kremlin memoirs, provincial records, and interviews with top-level officials and oligarchs."—The New Yorker

"This briskly written, elegantly argued book is a triumph of the art of contemporary history.... Eschewing the fashionable academic focus on social movements, and the related notion that the Soviet downfall was owing to an uncontrollable wave of popular support for democracy—and also countering the self-congratulatory idea that unrelenting ideological and military pressure from the West led to the USSR's demise, Kotkin concentrates instead on Soviet elites, persuasively arguing that the collapse was the outcome of Mikhail Gorbachev's 'pursuit of a romantic dream' of socialist reform."—Benjamin Schwarz, The Atlantic Monthly

"Kotkin has recaptured the mood and feel of the end of the Soviet superpower with provocative profiles of not only Gorbachev but of Yeltsin and other Soviet and Russian leaders. Kotkin's brief but powerful book should be added to any list of 'must reads' on one of the most dramatic events—the fall of the Soviet Union—of the last century."—Robert J. Guttman, Europe

"Among the quantities of chaff produced about Russia over the past decade, there was after all some wheat, especially memoir literature, and Kotkin has gathered it together in what is now our most comprehensive analysis of the Leninist endgame."—Martin Malia, Washington Post Book World

"Concise and persuasive.... The mystery, for Kotkin, is not so much why the Soviet Union collapsed as why it did so with so little collateral damage."—Robert Cottrell, New York Review of Books

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170927838
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	08/14/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	807,049

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